The comfort of home.

I started writing this over a month ago. We’ve now been living in our new place for about six weeks.

—

These days, I tend to sleep through most of the night. Most mornings, I’ve been waking up for the first time at 5:30 or 6:30 a.m.

I grew up having terrible insomnia. While I’ve developed better sleep patterns throughout the years, sleeping through the night is new to me.

Do I feel more rested? Hard to say. Sometimes I feel more stiff. I sometimes wake up feeling heavy. With the transition to moving to a new place, my nervous system is still in adjustment mode. Yes, the place is better. It’s quieter. And it’s different.

Morning light coming in through the shutters, 6:40 a.m.

I joked to my husband as we headed to get groceries early on a Sunday morning, “We moved and we completely changed our lives.” I was being light-hearted, but we’ve been doing things differently; our routines are changing. Our bedroom porch door faces east, so even with the shutters down, the summer morning light often wakes us up.

So we’ve been getting up earlier. We even got up this past Saturday to go for a morning hike before it got too hot.

Our apartment where we moved from was on a major street. The sound of traffic was so persistent that the noise mostly became part of everyday life. It was also the source of stress. And that’s not counting the other stressors we experienced there, including burglary, car theft (it was recovered the same day), a SWAT standoff on the other side of our building that prevented us from leaving by car for several hours, and more.

When I put it like that, it makes the place sound awful. But mostly, on a day-to-day basis, it wasn’t bad. And perhaps I am minimizing it. I was really done with living there. Since we didn’t want to break the lease, we made do. There were things I enjoyed: I enjoyed taking walks to the nearby park or chatting with our neighbors. My husband appreciated the convenience of the 5-7 minute drive to work.

And…we only moved a mile west. We still live close to his work. That park is still in walking distance, albeit a little farther away. Instead of living on a busy 6-lane street, we are tucked away in a condo complex in a neighborhood, about two or three blocks in either direction from busy streets. While I can look to the northeast and see the Dunkin’ Donuts sign that borders on a major road, I can also look across the street and just see apartments and trees. It is much, much better to live here now.

This monsoon season has brought a few intense wind and thunderstorms. We can stand and watch them from our porch.

Our office had enough space for our new futon couch, so it can double as a guest room. In the living room, I have enough dance space that I can turn completely in both directions without running into anything. In our old apartment, I could only turn in one direction freely.

Some days, I literally hug the walls. Walls that we chose the colors for, and, with the generous help of my mother-in-law, painted.

There are some inconveniences to new home ownership. Getting appliances with the condo, but discovering that not all of them work, and having to replace or repair them. The incessant ads in the mail for this and that coverage or service that we may or may not need. And so on.

And then there is also the quiet. The quiet I longed for, the quiet that because my first priority when we started seriously looking for places. There is the increased amount of space, the freedom to move from room to room. And there is the greater sense and comfort of home.